Mail Time!: The Return

Not trying to go Phoenix Wright or anything, but this was the letter I got back from Nintendo:

Nothing to see here... right?

It's the same letter that everyone who sent something to Nintendo asking about any of Operation Rainfall's big three titles (and even some people who never mentioned the games) have gotten.   Nothing is unusual about the message itself, as it's the usual ambiguous PR talk that no one likes to say or hear.

Look closer, though.  At the bottom of the letter is some faded discoloration which, upon closer inspection, is the same message from the middle section of the letter upside-down and backwards.  Then I checked the inside of the envelope and found the letterhead had rubbed off on the inside of it:

I think part of it says "odnetniN"

Obviously the ink on the letter wasn't even dry when the letter was sent out.  That leads to several assumptions, not all of which may be true:

1. Nintendo's customer service has a very specific, streamlined way for dealing with this particular message.

2. This arrived a week after my letter was sent, which considering I'm in Ohio and it was mailed to Washington means it would have taken about three days to arrive.  The method is so efficient time-wise that letters go straight from the printer to the envelope,and this needs to be the case because, possibly,

3. They're getting a lot of messages like this.

 What I imagine the consumer service reps look like after

a few thousand letters.

Mail Time!

Dear Reggie,

As a Nintendo fan since my parents first got my brother and me a Nintendo Entertainment System, as well as an owner of every Nintendo home console, including a Virtual Boy, I implore you to localize Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower.

Please take my money,
SCXCR
 

Hope this finds you well, Reggie!


Operation Rainfall

SC On Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Wii)

This is yet another game I wound up trying because someone in a Skype call mentioned it.  Where oh where do I begin with this one?

Sure, why not?

The game revolves around a post-apocalyptic world in which most of humanity has disappeared and the world as we knew it has fallen into desolation and disrepair... except for some kid voiced by the green ranger (no joke).  After a short and somewhat eerie monologue about burying his dead grandpa in front of the house, he sets out to find anyone else who might still be alive.

Right off the bat it's apparent that basic movement tends to be sketchy.  It's the simple enough scheme of move with the stick and point with the Wiimote where you want to face for turning, but with the third-person perspective it means:

A. You can end up pointing the flashlight behind Seto, suddenly stopping him,
B. At times the detection of each turn for some reason causes Seto's character model to briefly (and I mean split-second briefly) glitch and end up staring back at you while leaning to the side Smooth Criminal style,
C. Navigating narrow pathways (which you'll have in several underground/ruined locations) becomes harder than it needs to be.

This sequence?  With Fragile Dreams' controls?  That'll replace the whale in me nightmares.

Combat also tends to be a bit off at times as the majority of it involves Seto swinging things like sticks, bamboo swords, pipes, butterfly nets (yes really), staffs, and other melee weapons at various ghostly enemies like dogs, jellyfish (?), crows, and later on robots.  Thanks to the viewpoint most of combat is spent aiming off to either side of Seto to try and judge distance and, you know, be able to see what you're trying to hit.

This and movement still functionally work, especially with ranged weapons, but both tend to fall into the "could be better" category.

Killing said enemies gains experience for leveling, thereby becoming stronger and getting a larger health bar (always good), and yields "mystery items" which are usually health items or things that can be sold for money to the randomly-appearing chicken man with a stroller.

No, really.

Back away slowly...

This is done at small fire barrels that are found all over the land which completely refill Seto's health, keep away enemies, and reveal what any and all mystery items are, assuming he can Tetris them into his backpack-which-is-actually-dangling-in-front-of-him-for-some-reason.  Why can't Seto figure out what they are when he picks them up considering he has a goddamn flashlight he can use to see what it is?

Oh look, a minor inconsistency!

The aforementioned merchant is a bit creepy at first, but once you realize that (A) he will buy all the otherwise useless shit you pick up, including buying certain mystery items (read: gems) the moment Seto sits in front of a fire whether he's there or not, and (B) he's voiced by Kakashi, he just becomes a goofy-sounding money flow.  Of course, that's assuming you didn't change the voices to Japanese because you want to have Johnny Yong Bosch's voice rattling in your head endlessly while playing the game for the Internets.

Got some rare things on sale, stranger!

Seto meets all kinds of different characters along his journey, including several ghosts of deceased people, a talking computer, a robot, an old woman, and others.  Most of them tend to come and go (read: "die" in some fashion) and at times it is a bit emotional.  Not to me since I'm only programmed to express emotion six times daily, but when their scenarios play out in environments littered with several drawings, mementos, and last wishes of the people who lived there, combined with a piano-heavy beautifully-composed score of music, coupled with the constant themes of loneliness, death, and the search for companionship, this experience became the main reason I played the game to completion instead of tossing it aside at the halfway point.

The dialogue however tends to range from unintentionally creepy, to unintentionally funny, to unnecessarily wordy.  The latter is particularly true for the Personal Frame character, a backpack-style computer which goes so far into detail it- you know what?  Here's a conversation from the game between the frame and Seto.  I am directly copying this word-for-word:

(after finding a key)

Seto: Whoa!  Is this what I think it is?

PF: It is a key.  After analysis, I can report that there is a 75% chance that it is the key to the turnstile shutter.

Seto: Great!  Then that means we can open the shutter now!

PF: Wait.  Please hold on.  At a probability of 75%, that means there is a 25% risk that it will not open it for us.

Seto: I'm sure it'll work.  I mean, 75% is way more than 25%.

PF: I suppose that is a valid statement.  Yes, it might work.  Indeed.  A 75% probability.

Seto: Yeah.  We'll be fine!

PF: Yes!  We will be fine!

After hearing various forms of this same conversation over and over, or hearing the Personal Frame continually state the obvious and/or what a tutorial window has already explained, and not even getting past the first section of the game, this becomes grating.  Fast.

I don't have your dividend resulting in a 

remainder of two, and FUCK YOU ANYWAY!

If there's one sticking point for me in the rest of the game, it would be the ending.  I won't spoil it directly, but I am going to mention specific themes.  Skip the next paragraph to avoid them.

********
You essentially beat the final boss, (Yes, there are bosses.  I probably should have mentioned that earlier) find something you were looking for almost the whole game, are given a severe downer of a monologue from the future, then the ending continues as it was.  The game all but says, 'You won the prize, but in the end the prize will be gone.  Then you'll be right back where you started.'  While I get how that applies to real life and don't expect the happiest of happy endings for a game like this, it is a bit of a buzzkill.
********

Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon.  I'd say I've played better JRPGs, but that would be one hell of a cop out excuse to not play this.  You should at least try it if you're an RPG fan, especially if you're looking for one on the Wii.  And no, I'm not just saying that because there's a storm cell brewing near Nintendo of America with an unknown amount of rainfall imminent.

No, I'm not making an Operation Rainfall reference.  I just checked the  five-day forecast for Redmond, Washington and it says there's a chance of rain next Monday.  Really.

I'm just saiyan...

Remembering My Game Party Experience

Hey, it's time for shitty Wii party game number 1!  That's right, it's time for the most generically-named party game you've ever seen, Game Party!

wiiviewr liked this?  What the fuck was he thinking?

This is not a review so much as a recount of my experience playing the game.  Let's face it.  Any gamer worth their salt knows that this is a horrible title.  So let's not waste any time as I go over my last conscious memories from when I played this with the following people:

WellUnreal007 (owns the game, played at his house)

Blondeguygamer

Wizwar100

AngelHalo

ShadowSnake123

-Note the obscene amount of characters that can be chosen from.  None of them add anything to the game aside from a different face in the crowd, however.

-Consider having a moment of silence for Midway, then decide against it.

-Realize that Wizwar is recording all of this on his camcorder set up at the back of the room.  Any attempt to win any of these games is almost entirely replaced with an urge to break them in as many ways as possible.

AIR HOCKEY

-Note that the Wiimote needs to be held parallel to the ground and pointed forward the whole time.  This is so awkward I can't even begin to describe it properly.

-Movement is waaaaaay too sensitive, making lining up and blocking shots needlessly difficult.

-Puck moves very slow, possibly to try and offset the overly-sensitive controls.

-The A button traps the puck.  Trapping the puck is a foul every time.  Why is this option even available?

 This is how air hockey works, right?

-Spent a good minute or so mashing the A button to drum rhythms on the table between shots.  This is how I'm forced to entertain myself.

-The puck went off the table.  Don't ask me how because the puck just disappeared in one frame and that message popped up.

-It happened again!  How the fuck am I doing this?!

-Finished a game to 7 (losing 7-5).  All but two goals were scored by knocking the puck into our own nets.

HOOP SHOT (aka basketball)

-Game is 4-player, but doesn't allow having 4 Wiimotes synced at the same time.  What the fuck, game?

-Having watched someone play before me, I can see that you just need to flick the Wiimote forward while holding A, and release to shoot the ball.  Despite this I still can't score a single basket with only 30 seconds remaining in the one-minute game.

-Panic and resort to flinging as many basketballs at the hoop as I possibly can.  I didn't see if any went in because I was facing backwards, swinging myself into circles, or running laps around the room while shooting enough projectiles to make a Japanese bullet hell game blush.

Sort of.

-End up with a score of 0, despite shooting at least 100 shots.

-See from other players that swishing a shot counts as a 3-pointer instead of 2.  None of them seem to get how to consistently do it either, as both shooting normally and pelvic thrusting the Wiimote have gotten shots to go in.

-Several balls fly into the way-too-excited-and-yet-randomly-apathetic crowd around the game, phasing right through them.

-Several people get high scores, only to discover that the high scores are populated with user names like "fuckthis" and "mangina."  Apparently no one in Unreal's family liked this game even when they did well at it.

DARTS

-Sat out for most of this game, as it had the same damn problem with not being able to sync 4 Wiimotes at the same time.  Instead, two Wiimotes are synced and people need to trade them.  This is so stupid I don't know where to begin.

-So you lock onto a spot on the board by pointing and hitting A, then hold A, push the Wiimote forward in a dart-throwing motion, and release A to throw the dart.  Congratulations, you've made playing darts way more complex than it should be.

-Note that throwing strength is taken into account as no one actually hits the spot they lock on to.  Most don't even hit the board on the first try.

-Just watched two well-thrown darts bounce off the center of the board.  I guess it means they hit the metal rims around each section, but having played real-life darts several times before I've never once seen this happen.

-I get a few tosses and discover that throwing too hard causes the dart to fly to the top of the screen and disappear through the top wall, never to be seen or heard from again.  Someone call NASA and see if they can find my darts.

 100% accurate photo of my dart throw.

-Even the people who did horrible at this game got high scores somehow.  Game Party: because your expectations weren't low enough already.

SKILL BALL (aka ski ball, aka THE QUEST!)

-Think Wii bowling, only with a throwing motion so picky half your rolls end up as little wuss shots that barely make it to the edge of the ramp before rolling back down to you.

-See that any ball which rolls back down the ramp, including balls thrown too hard that bounce off the back of the cage and/or holes, don't count and can be done over.

-My turn.  I can't get any weird throwing motions to work so I try to get at least one ball in the elusive 100-point holes in either corner.  Apparently Unreal's never done it or seen anyone do it.

-The frame-rate dips into single digits every time the ball gets near the score holes.  I'll repeat that.  The frame-rate dips into single-digits.  When the ball goes near the holes.  The ball is the only moving object on the screen.  And the frame-rate drops.  HOW?!

-With three balls to go, I get one in the 100-point slot.  For some reason I celebrated like I'd just won the final match of Wimbledon.

-ShadowSnake somehow throws a ball which bounces off the side of a different lane, ricochets back into his lane, and goes in the 50-point hole.  And I thought MY shot was lucky!

ShadowSnake123's got such a supple wrist...

-As usual, bastardized user names are the high scores.  This is dragging on so long I'm considering busting out Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular.  That's how bad it's gotten!

SHUFFLEBOARD

-This one seems to work, sort of.  I still can't get anything to stop and count for points without divine intervention, though.  That and my shots seem to go to the left and the right at random.  I say that because when I actually tried hooking a shot to the left and it went right.

-Not much else to say.  Maybe I'm just waiting for this to end at this point?

TRIVIA

-Divided into several sections like General, History, Sports, Music, etc.

-Wait, you can use 4 Wiimotes now?!  Why didn't this work for the other games?!

-Okay, fuck this.  In the Kids section there's a question about the head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team.  HOW DO YOU FUCK UP TRIVIA?!

Even the coach is confused!

PING CUP (aka beer pong)

-Unreal is the only one who can play this game, and even then he had issues with it.  It took about 15-20 minutes to finish one round in which he got a ball to bounce into a cup five times.

-Sometimes if you miss the ball flies right through the people in the background, and sometimes it doesn't.

-Nobody else got a single ball in.  I'm not sure anybody cared enough to get at least one.  It's like no one wanted the controller for the next turn.

That's it.  I'm done.  Now to go back to editing videos and playing another shitty Wii game which I will not name.  And no, it isn't Fragile Dreams.  I said it's a SHITTY Wii game!

Duke Nukem Forever: My Thoughts

Yes, I got it.  Here's what I think of it.  You may (not) be surprised.

SC On Rogue Trooper: Quartz Zone Massacre (Wii)

 Oh dear...

Ho boy, where to start with this one.  Let's get a few things out of the way:

-The game is based on a British comic strip series called Rogue Trooper which has been around since the early 80s.
-Quartz Zone Massacre is one of the novels based on Rogue Trooper, released in 2006.  Good luck finding information on it.
-This is the third game made around Rogue Trooper.  The first two were an 8-bit PC game and an Amiga title.  This specific version is actually a port of the Rogue Trooper game on PS2, XBox, and PC from 2006, updated with Wii controls.
-It's apparently popular enough to warrant having a Rogue Trooper skin in Little Big Planet 2.
 -It's an over-the-shoulder shooter.  The last one of those I played was RE5 and I've skipped most of them, including Gears of War (yeah, blasphemy, whatever).
-This song has been stuck in my head since I first played it.

Hey wait a minute...

Everybody got that?  Good.

Rogue Trooper (the game and the comic) centers around the planet Nu Earth where two groups, the Norts and the Southers are in conflict.  They're fighting because... uh... 

WAR IS ETERNAL... I guess?

Actually I think it's because of some "strategic point in the universe" bullshit.  Whatever.  The planet becomes so polluted from all the chemical warfare between the two sides that the Norts have to wear a special breathing apparatus and chem suit to go outside, while the Southers develop G.I.s, or Genetic Infantrymen.  These guys (and girls) are specifically designed to be able to survive in Nu Earth's environment, resist a myriad of toxins, and be able to cosplay Dr. Manhattan with relative ease.  How have the Southers not completely and utterly dominated the Norts with these guys?  Well...

1. The game starts with someone betraying the Southers, resulting in most of the G.I.s being destroyed as they try to land on the planet, and

2. None of the G.I.s wear armor.  Apparently they forgot that the Norts' guns fire, you know, bullets.

Guns?  Bullets?!  IN A WAR?!  Since when?

So after several more parallels between the Civil/Second World/Almost Every War, Rogue lands with his friends Gunnar, Bagman, and Helm.  They all die and their brain-chip-things get attached to his gun, bag, and helmet where they stay alive and serve their own special uses, like acting as a sentry gun, hacking computers or generating ammo.

Yes, they're actually named Gunnar, Bagman, and Helm when they're alive.  They might as well be named Dead, Dead, and Dead.

To the game's credit, it handles decently.  Running, climbing, aiming, scoping enemies, and even getting into and out of cover all work well.  The parts where it gets bogged down in the Wii release are turning, weapon switching, and grenade use.

Turning is done the usual way in Wii games like this; by pointing to the sides of the screen.  This works okay most of the time, but sometimes going to the corners of the screen to look up and to the side or down and to the side are extremely sensitive, to the point where Rogue ends up spinning in a circle for a moment or two.

Will it go 'round in circles?

Weapon switching is done with the D-pad.  Specifically, switching guns is done by hitting up, and grenades are switched with left.  This is an awkward trade-off made during the porting process because down on the D-pad is for switching to the sniper scope.

Why couldn't they make it slightly less awkward by having gun switching be right instead of up?  Because... uh...

YOU AGAIN!

Throwing grenades is, by far, the most awkward thing to do.  While you can easily throw a grenade in front of you or blindly from cover by flicking the nunchuk, To aim a grenade throw you need to hold the nunchuck "vertically" until a throwing line appears, aim with a combination of tilting the wiimote and using the joystick, and flick the nunchuk forward.

I've had just about everything go wrong trying to do this, from badly overshooting a target to lobbing the grenade a whole foot in front of Rogue and having to dive away from the explosion.

Thankfully the other abilities are much easier to use (and abuse).  Gunnar can create a silencer for the rifle or turn it into an automated turret while Rogue runs around with his infinite-ammo pistol.  Helm can hack computers and create a visual decoy of Rogue.  Bagman is a nigh-endless supply of ammo and health packs and can also create new weapons and grenade types as the game progresses, such as shotguns, rocket launchers, chaff grenades and proximity explosives.

These are created using salvage, which can be picked up from damn near everything that dies or is already dead.  Nort soldiers of all types, disabled turrets, dead Southers, and even abandoned droids which are (sort of but not really because you can see them on the radar) hidden away.  The grunts and Souther units don't count for as much, but are still worth picking up for the long run, especially on the two higher difficulties.

Speaking of which, "Normal" is the easy difficulty.  I feel like I've been lied to.

I can explain only about 2% of this image and why it's here.

There are a few sequences where Rogue is either protecting a train or flying around in a ship and trying to keep it intact until it reaches a certain point.  Like anything involving a protection mission, this is a pain in the ass.  There are checkpoints, but they save both progress AND the current condition of whatever you're trying to protect.  If you hit the first checkpoint and the train you're on is about to explode, you need to either be flawless the rest of the way or start the whole mission over.

Oh, and the train blew up and/or crashed once the mission was finished anyway.  What was the point of doing that mission again?

 I swear to God if you do that one more time...

One more thing I should add before I forget is that the storytelling is all over the place.  Like I said, I've never read any of the comic and am not familiar with the story beyond what's in this game.  That being said, the characters that aren't Rogue or the traitor general might as well just not exist.  Gunner, Bagman and Helm are given next to no build-up before there are unceremoniously killed.  

Hell, Helm was captured and poisoned to death by a Nort officer with a Russian accent, (whose name escapes me right now) but she is killed off-screen by Rogue before anything is established about her other than what side she fights for.  The storytelling is single-minded and incapable of building up anyone other than Rogue and the traitor general, and even then I'd say Rogue is an overly-simplistic personality that we're supposed to sympathize with simply because we're forced to follow him for the whole game, kind of like that one other guy...

OH NO YOU DIDN'T!

The biggest issue I have with the game, though, is that it's buggy.  Very buggy.  While I haven't experienced any game-killing glitches or freezes, I have seen the following:

-Being able to shoot through parts of the environment you shouldn't be able to, e.g. solid steel doors.

-Audio for cutscenes getting out of sync to the point where it looks like Steve Oedekerk hijacked Rogue Trooper to make another Kung Pow movie (which I'd be okay with).

-Getting stuck while crouching near cover, causing Rogue's legs to flail around like he's Russian dancing backwards.  Actually, Rogue will do this just about any time he's near any sort of wall or obstacle.

-Having Rogue shake uncontrollably while looking around in cover.  Sometimes it's so bad I want to find him a blanket and some hot cocoa.

-Dead enemies getting stuck in mid-air.

I'm the only person who knows what the music is, aren't I?

This, to me, is one of those games that's just sort of there.  It's not bad, it's not good, it's just sort of there.  It feels like there could have been a lot more done with the source material than what was done here.  There had to be more for the comic to run as long as it did.  The excessive linearity (even by shooter standards) and blandness of the environments, except for places like the petrified forest and the piers, are really underwhelming, even for the time it originally came out.  It was, unfortunately, pretty forgettable.

How do you manage that with what is otherwise a pretty interesting concept?

 

You're dead!

SC On Resident Evil: Survivor (PSX)

How can a review be longer than some speed runs of the game? Let's just say nerd rage is involved...